Tag Archives: Christmas

Usual Rubbish

T’is the seizin’.

2000 Years To Christmas

No, you’re not on my list, and for one very good reason: I don’t have a freaking list. I can see about getting you on Anti-Lincoln’s list, but I don’t think that’s the kind of list you want to be included on, if you know what I mean. A word to the wise.

Yes, I’m afraid it’s that time of year again, friends. And once again I have to explain to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) how the world of humans works. You’d think after twenty years he would have some of this stuff encoded into his memory banks, but no … every holiday season it’s human nature 101 and elements of capitalism. What the hell am I, anyway, a freaking community college for robots? Hey …. not a bad idea, really. We’ve got the space, and at least a couple of spare power strips they can plug into. We could call it Robotech, order some jerseys and pennants and …. WHAT AM I SAYING?

Christmas is always confusing, right? For one thing, it’s a consumer frenzy, at least for half of the population. For the rest of us, it’s mostly about blocking our ears when we go to the grocery store so that we don’t hear the holiday loop, playing over and over … something we of Big Green find particularly irritating, as they almost never include any selections from 2000 Years To Christmas, our now-classic holiday album, only this year celebrating its 20th anniversary. And while millions are charging their way into credit oblivion, we remain cloistered in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, crazy neighbors right upstairs, and the bailiffs at the door. “The law is an ass,” I keep shouting at them, and they just keep pounding.

Are they still pounding on the door? Sounds like it.

Well, you know what they say about the law. First comes the pounding, then comes the impounding. And while I’m explaining capitalism to Marvin for the nineteenth time, I may as well share this small lesson with you, namely the part about what happens when you pay neither rent nor property taxes for years on end. As dyed in the wool collectivists, we are merely seeking shelter where shelter is available (such as it is), but that carries little weight with the local constabulary, whose minions are apparently under orders to evict us in time for the Christmas pageant. They want to see us shivering in our second-hand galoshes on the side of the road as the yuletide procession trudges past the hammer mill entrance. How festive these men in blue can be!

Right, well … in any case, if you want to help with our legal defense fund, celebrate this Christmas with a 20th anniversary edition of 2000 Years To Christmas, available now from us or from online streaming/download services. We’ve got a few signed copies, so if you want one, let me know. Just don’t tell the bailiff … he’ll want one, too.

Usual Rubbish

Secret Satan. (I mean, Santa.)

Hmmm, let me see. Nicely wrapped. Let’s see what’s inside. Okay … huh. An empty bubble pack that used to contain a ballpoint pen. Nice. So …. who amongst you could have known that that’s something I’ve always wanted?

Oh, hi, everyone. Yeah, it’s that time of year again, and Big Green is celebrating the holidays in the usual way. We put on a bunch of cheesy records. We make a little extra rice and mustard greens. And then there’s the Secret Santa exchange of gifts, which we do in the traditional way … one gift at a time, and the recipient tries to guess who the giver is. How exciting. Someone bring me my sodium bicarbonate. This could be a long night!

That’s not to say that the holidays are any less problematic in our makeshift home than they are in everyone else’s. There’s a lot to look out for here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – a lot going on beneath that cool, clammy exterior.  For instance, if you’re stringing the lights on the parapet, watch the icicle lamp string …. it’s got a short in it. And we try not to put a tree out in the courtyard, because the mansized tuber tends to get attached to it. (No, I mean literally attached. Those roots are always growing.)

No clues!But really the greatest danger is having Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, pick your name out of the hat for Secret Santa. Christmas is his time to offload all of the failed experiments from the past year, and there are usually quite a few of them. You may end up unwrapping a package that contains a beaker of radioactive sludge or something that’s ticking like a bomb. (“Hey, Mack …” you’d say in your 1940s New York accent, “What the heck is this thing? It’s ticking like a bomb!”)

I don’t like to mention this in mixed company, but the fact is that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was a Secret Santa gift from Mitch. He was trying to build some form of pleasure vehicle, but something went badly wrong, so he put a makeshift head on it and called it “Marvin”. Don’t ask me how he got Marvin into that flat box. It’s a bit like the Casper Mattress package – open it up and FLOP! Out comes Marvin.

Well, if I don’t see you, have a great Christmas, tremendous holiday break, whatever floats your boat.

 

Usual Rubbish

Unwrapping.

I got socks this year. Lots of socks. And a few discarded ties. Plus some bricks from the courtyard. No, they weren’t loose – the mansized tuber just pulled them out of the courtyard and gave them to me. Yeah, I put them back. Now that’s a holiday to remember.

Well, I don’t know what kind of a Christmas YOU had, but here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, we had a rousing celebration that quite nearly woke the dead. No, it wasn’t well attended, but Marvin (my personal robot assistant) cranked up the stereo and started playing random sides from Sun Ra to Fountains of Wayne. It was Christmas in crazytown, and it didn’t go unnoticed by our neighbors, who (I feel compelled to say) were … ahem … a bit LACKING this year in the HOLIDAY SPIRIT. (You heard!)

Then there were random fireworks. Now, I hate to be a spoil sport, but I don’t like hearing explosions late at night. It makes me jump, and my mind goes straight to some imagined mishap in Mitch Macaphee’s lab. It took a moment to recall that he’s out of town this week, but the downside risk of having a mad science laboratory in your basement does tend to put you on alert. He was Keep it DOWN!muttering something about a “planet buster” last week. Sometimes that’s just idle rambling, but you can never be too sure. Look at what happened to the planet Zorchon. (Yeah, that’s right – there IS no planet Zorchon, sure …. not NOW.)

So, hey … there’s a lot to unwrap with the kind of holidays we have around here. People tend to save up their resentments and hard feelings all year, then let them loose on their relatives around the yuletide dinner table. That’s not what happens at the Cheney Hammer Mill, but only because we don’t have a dinner table. We typically sit around this old cable spool we found in the middle of the road one time when we were driving back from a gig at Middlebury College in the 1990s. It makes a fair table … not a HOLIDAY table, per se, but a fair platform for dishes, cutlery, etc. Then there are the boxes we sit on – can’t remember where we found those. Talk about festive!

Anyway, we survived it. Hope you survived yours.